Tuning In: WEEI's Jon Meterparel finds new calling

Friday

Oct 19, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Bill Doyle Tuning In

Jon Meterparel lasted a dozen years as the flash boy on the Dennis & Callahan morning show on WEEI-WVEI. So he was no flash in the pan.

Pete Sheppard was dropped as a sports flasher for the Big Show and Jon Wallach moved to 98.5, the Sports Hub, but Meter’s meter continued to run as WEEI’s only full-time flasher, providing sports updates with a twisted sense of humor.

Then last Friday Meterparel announced he was leaving the show to follow his dream to do more play by play. Meterparel will continue to call Boston College football and basketball on radio and he has an interview scheduled for next week with the CBS Sports Network to do basketball and possibly baseball play-by-play. Gil Santos has announced that this will be his final year on Patriots radio play-by-play so that job will be open next season.

“There are so many networks now,” Meterparel said, “and so many games that there have to be spots. The goal eventually is either to land a professional play-by-play opportunity or become the next Sean McDonough type.”

McDonough has called games for ESPN since he left Red Sox play-by-play.

Meterparel, 40, said WEEI wanted him back and offered him a new contract, but he turned the station down.

“I never wanted to be a talk show host,” he said. “There was a lot going on there that was tough to give up, but I feel like my ceiling was hit there. It was tremendous that they still wanted to keep me, which a lot of people can’t say when they leave that place.”

While John Dennis and Gerry Callahan understood why Meterparel left, they didn’t want him to go.

“I’m disappointed,” Callahan said. “He made me laugh. It’s not going to be easy to find someone else to come in and do that.”

Callahan wondered why Meterparel followed the path of Celtics radio voice Sean Grande and NBA television voice Mike Breen in leaving their jobs as flash boys to work in play by play.

“I hate them both for doing it,” Callahan said of Grande and Breen, “because they both made me laugh and they both entertained me and I don’t necessarily care who the play-by-play guy is. Good play-by-play guys aren’t as rare as flash boys who make me laugh.”

Callahan helped Meterparel land his job at WEEI. Callahan was a guest on a radio show in Charlotte, N.C., and Meterparel was the show’s flash boy.

“He was over in the corner and he was a wise ass,” Callahan said. “He was funny and he was making fun of all the car racing people and all the rednecks. Everyone wanted to kill him, but he was cracking me up. We needed to find someone like that, a third wheel for our show.”

Meterparel was the whipping boy in Charlotte so he didn’t mind taking abuse on the air from Dennis and Callahan.

“I was used to it,” he said. “I never took it took seriously. I always considered it part of the show.”

To Meterparel, nothing about his personal life was off limits. D&C listeners learned that he sat down to urinate and that he wouldn’t allow his two boys, 7-year-old Ben and 4-year-old Nick, to play with toy guns or play contract sports. He even admitted he doesn’t like to get wet and won’t jump in a pool or the ocean.

“He admits these weird quirks,” Callahan said. “Most people have these hang-ups, but they never admit them.”

Callahan will miss Meterparel, but not to the point where he’ll listen to BC football or basketball.

“No, I won’t go that far,” Callahan said.

Meterparel would wake up at 4 a.m. and arrive at the station at 5:10 a.m. each weekday.

Last Tuesday, he woke up at 4:20 a.m. and after a brief scare that he was late for work, he rolled back to sleep until 7:30 a.m. Callahan would love to wake up Meterparel with an early call one morning.

“The problem is he doesn’t turn his phone on,” Callahan said. “He’s a step ahead of us. He doesn’t want to waste the battery, but we’re definitely going to harass him.”

Meterparel admitted that his wife, Heather, was apprehensive at first about him quitting his job, but she understands that it’s time to follow his dream. She’ll also bring home a steady paycheck working in human resources at Genzyme in Cambridge.